I am now going to live on a mountaintop
~
I just came across something that broke my brain: the discovery that there are apparently millions of people out there who don't know how to spell the simple word dilemma, and that that egregious and etymology-denying misspelling has been propagated and promulgated since long before the coming of that amazing misinformation-spreading tool known ( Read more... )
I just came across something that broke my brain: the discovery that there are apparently millions of people out there who don't know how to spell the simple word dilemma, and that that egregious and etymology-denying misspelling has been propagated and promulgated since long before the coming of that amazing misinformation-spreading tool known ( Read more... )
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But if natural language didn't mutate and evolve over time, there'd be no such thing as etymology.
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:P
I grok language shift. I'm aware that some misspellings take root over time (like rack gradually replacing wrack, which irritates me because it means the language is losing another little bit of richness IMTAO). But some things cross the line (again IMTAO, but hey, I am after all the supreme arbiter of taste in the universe).
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~falls over laughing~
That would be a yes...
Meanwhile, we've been discussing this whole thing, and your comment, at chez Penguin, and it's...um...complicated. Because I have a foot firmly planted in both camps (when it's not inserted into my mouth or being used to wipe the egg off my face) - I'm not a believer in preserving the language in amber by any means, but I passionately believe that changes should only be ones that, er, um, fly...that feel right...and that the scumsucking masses of brainless education-free smegbags out there are rarely to be trusted with knowing what feels right. Or something. It's...um...complicated :-S
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Have to disagree with you on one point though: everyone who types as I do knows that the correct spelling is 'balck'.
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I think what's gobsmacked and squicked and distressed me most about this is the realisation that there are probably dozens...scores...lots and lots of other examples of specific widespread Iggernce out there in the wide world, just waiting for the internet community to discover them and thus spread the mistakes further and faster. For all my travels, for all my interactions with hundreds of thousands of people in my career as a troubadour/communicator, I'm coming to think I led a sheltered life - the people in my own circle either were ones with good writing skills (including good spelling) or ones who had other talents only and had the good sense to avoid writing stuff down ( ... )
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I think I must have noticed stuff more at an early age - I heard 'brought' for 'bought' constantly in the UK; I had a school friend who insisted that 'retch' was pronounced 'reach', etc.
'Back in balck/I like to gawk/After a shower I reach for talc ...'
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Hang on, didn't we first "meet" in grammarpolice? I picked that one up from Patrick the Punha aka Mod Max; it's his fondly snarky take on the "heart" smiley symbol, which he interprets as "less than three", and he's been known to send 2.9 as his entire comment on someone else's comment that he finds masterful :-)
I'm the first to admit that there was a lot of ivory between my living space and street level, but apart from growing up in three English-speaking countries (yerss, a lot of travelling; my early childhood was one of genteel international...erm, poverty) I also spent most of the '90s back in my native land, living in the bosom of the uneducated less educated - and although I was living daily with pantses and fulled and brung and drownded, I never heard the brought-for-bought. In fact, I still haven't heard it spoken unironically; I've only encountered it on the internet, in posts of complaint. Remind me - which part of the Yuk was yours? Am curious ( ... )
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